nd art. For the standard of orthodoxy in this
connexion requires not only that we respond to a grand conception of
humanity as a whole, but that also in particulars we are loyal to the
Terentian tag, 'Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.' The worthier
side of modern realism has done full justice to this motto.

The expressions of this faith in human solidarity are so various, and
its influence so pervading, that it is not surprising to find some
modern thinkers looking to it as the essence of religion. In the
sociological theory of religion, it is suggested that to become aware of
society and its claims constitutes religion itself. A man is converted
when his soul is 'congregationalized'. There is even a tendency to find
the highest element in religious experience in a strong feeling of one's
unity with one's fellows. Such a feeling of endless sympathy and
tolerance is so large a part of love that it is easily mistaken for the
whole. For this starting-point, we might readily imagine a Western faith
in humanity with Walt Whitman as its prophet. But a second
characteristic of Western thought about religion forbids any
idealization of humanity as we know it, and draws us beyond the
indiscriminate catholicism of 'The Open Road'. This characteristic may
be defined as our faith in the worth of activity and in the reality of
progress. We believe in the unity of mankind much more as a task to be
achieved than as an accomplished or given fact to be enjoyed. Nietzsche
says somewhere, 'if the goal of humanity be wanting, do we not lack
humanity itself?' We look for the ultimate unity of mankind in the
pursuit of a common end. The search for such a goal, and the effort to
achieve it, lend worth to history and to present action.

This faith, often blind and unreasoned, is distinctly Western and
modern. We do not derive it even from Greece. It comes to us through
Christianity and modern science. The absence of any such faith in
activity and progress creates the pessimism of the East. Hinduism and
Buddhism are alike in their bankruptcy on this side. The majestic
religious philosophy of India sees in history only an endless and
meaningless repetition. Thucydides and Plato assume the same view, if I
mistake not. As Eucken says, 'Ancient views of life bore throughout an
unhistorical character. The numerous philosophical doctrines of the
procession of endless similar cycles, which continually return to the
starting-point, were only th